BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Make no mistake, there really is a test that can detect the abuse of human growth hormone by athletes. A blood test, it was used at the recent Olympics in Beijing, as well as at the Games in Turin and Athens.

But because there hasn’t been one positive result in more than 8,000 tests conducted on Olympic athletes, skeptics question its effectiveness. Because it can detect the use of HGH only within a period of 24 to 36 hours, and hasn’t been widely implemented in out-of-competition testing, the test is easy to beat.

“It’s kind of an IQ test at events,” said Doug Rollins, who runs a Salt Lake City lab accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency. “The window of opportunity for detection is rather short.”

Rollins spoke here last week at a “Growth Hormone Summit,” sponsored by Major League Baseball and the UCLA Medical School’s office of continuing education, which brought together doctors, researchers, Olympic anti-doping authorities, baseball officials and lawyers. While Olympic sports have been using the HGH test on a limited basis, MLB has remained on the sidelines, criticizing it.

“No one should have complete faith in a test which has never produced a positive,” players’ union head Gene Orza said.

According to the Mitchell report released a year ago, HGH became the performance-enhancing drug of choice in baseball when mandatory random testing for steroids began in 2004. The report implicated several players in the use of HGH, most notably pitcher Roger Clemens, who insisted he never used performance-enhancing drugs.

“I don’t think anyone debates that the blood test in certain circumstances can detect the use of HGH,” said Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations. “I think the issue is, is it workable? Is the window of detection long enough? How do we explain the fact that we’ve never had a positive?”

The test has been used sparingly in Olympic sports because it was not available in sufficient quantities to conduct widespread out-of-competition testing until this past summer.

“The athletes know if you take growth hormone 48 hours before a competition and you are tested during a competition, the growth hormone will have already left the circulation — you won’t have any trace of it,” said Osquel Barroso, WADA’s senior manager of science. “That’s why out-of-competition testing without any previous warning is so important.”

Deterrent isn’t there

Now that the test is becoming more widely available, the WADA is urging anti-doping agencies around the world to conduct vigorous, targeted out-of-competition HGH testing. As long as athletes know they can use HGH with impunity until just before they get to competitions, cheaters aren’t likely to be deterred.

But Olympic athletes spend the vast majority of their time in training, or “out of competition.” Baseball players are in competition seven months of the year, virtually on a daily basis. For them to derive a performance-enhancing benefit from HGH, they would have to use it regularly. That might make the current test, even with its limitations, better suited for baseball than Olympic sports.

“That’s a very good point,” Barroso said.

Orza and Manfred disagree.

“It’s clear from this conference that the science is a long way off from being able to develop a valid, universally accepted test for human growth hormone,” Orza said.

Don Catlin, the former head of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory, is working to develop a urine test that might be more acceptable to the players, with funding by MLB and the NFL. Catlin’s task is greatly complicated by the fact that growth hormone exists in much more minute quantities in urine than in blood, and is difficult to extract.

“We’re trying to find a needle in a haystack,” Catlin said. “Well, there’s good hope.”

That’s because Catlin has been heartened in recent months by nanotechnology research conducted by Lance Liotta at George Mason University. Liotta has found a way to isolate and concentrate growth hormone using specially engineered nano particles, which might make the urine test feasible.

Liotta has been using nanotechnology successfully to detect early signs of cancer.

“I wish I could tell you we have a growth hormone (urine) test today,” Catlin said. “I can tell you we have made substantial progress I’m excited about. And the notion that we have Dr. Liotta, who walks in as a breath of fresh air with a new technology that can be applied, is very bright.”

Even Manfred found that exciting.

“The most important thing I heard is Dr. Liotta’s discussion of the nanotechnology and how promising it is with respect to the development of a workable urine test,” Manfred said. “For me, that’s the headline.”

Window of opportunity

There is another promising development. Richard Holt, a professor of endocrinology at the University of Southampton in England, is developing a test that can detect HGH use within a two-week window. Holt said he believes his test will be used within Olympic sports well before the 2012 London Games.

“I think we’re pretty close,” Holt said. “I can’t give you an exact time scale, but it’s not going to be long.”

But that would be another blood test. While it’s been conventional wisdom that baseball players will never accept a blood test, Orza said that’s not necessarily the case.

“We don’t oppose blood testing,” Orza said. “We say we’ll consider blood testing . . . when the time becomes right for it. Right now is not the time.”

The Post's ski and Olympics writer, Meyer covered his 12th Games last summer in Rio de Janeiro. He has covered five World Alpine Ski Championships and more than 100 World Cup ski events. He is a member of the Colorado Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame and Colorado Running Hall of Fame. He regularly covers running and the Colorado Rapids.

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